The Snail Factory

Operation Barbarossa

Summer came to an end in 1934 and the leaves around Snaughton University turned bright red. Efengi hauled his last suitcase into the dorms and left it on the bare mattress bunk. His eyes were filled with tears as he said farewell to his parents, and filled with stars as he turned his attentions to school and his upcoming career in Gastrofacture. He began to review his typewritten schedule when suddenly, it caught on fire.

And so they did. Bartolomeo showed all his friends in college the best of times, all without making a dent in the allowance provided by his father, Bartolomeo Snaildevil Jr., Heir to Snail Hell from the original Snail Devil himself.

After their freshman year, Efengi and Bart moved out of the dorms but stayed together in a suite at the Reggitz Apartment Tower. Bart talked Efengi out of a trip to Europe that would have proven ill-timed given the anti-alien sentiments coming to power, and Efengi always lent a helping hand by doing all of Bart's home work, class work and by sneaking cheat sheets into his shell before every test.

Their parting was tearful, at least on Efengi's part. Bart had no tear ducts, being a horrific abomination and all. They resolved to write and did at first to be sure, but quickly the stresses of hell and the far nastier stresses of the factory took their toll on the long distance correspondence. They remained on each others minds of course, but less and less at the forefront.

Until the day depicted above that is. After that they wrote again often as time allowed and visited twice a year, first at the factory and ever after in hell, where the misery wasn't quite so palpable.